Envy 14 (1st Gen), developed a fault with the DVD drive

I'll start by saying that my DVD drive DID work perfectly, I've had the laptop about 18 months (I think, either than or 24, I forget) i've burnt countless DVDs, made the backup DVDs etc and even right now my drive will play DVDs perfectly fine but I've just gone to burn a new DVD and it told me that the burning failed, I thought it was odd so I installed imgburn and re-did it (different disc) and again the burning failed and it told me I had a "Power Calibration Error"

Does anyone know how the heck I can fix this? In terms of reading DVDs it works perfectly fine, I literally just tested it to make sure, but flat out refuses to burn anything, no matter what disc I use or what media im trying to burn :/

 

Well since it's happening over img burn and for all types of discs the burning laser may have died/the lens may be dirty and needs to be professionally cleaned.


You are probably out of luck unless you want to send the computer in to HP or something.

 

Yeah, I pretty much had a feeling someone would say that :/ And I suppose buying a replacement is out of the question?.. Balls!

Looks like I might be hunting for a new laptop in the New Year

 

well. you could buy a replacement from the HP parts store for $133.57.

HP Parts Store - HP Computer Parts - HP Printer Parts - Compaq Parts

and put this into the search by part # box: 608374-001

you'll also need to figure out how to take the thing apart and the maintenance guide is missing/moved/the link is dead on the 1st gen page. So here it is from where I have it backed up: http://www.mediafire.com/?zk99ll3k7mol93d

It looks like you have to remove the top cover which will lead to tearing out the touchpad cable (or keyboard cables...or power button cable) if you aren't extremely careful.

I wasn't and ripped my touchpad data cable. Lucked out and was still under warranty though and got HP to fix it. The cables are stuck onto a couple places by double sided tape and are extremely fragile. You cannot pull them out by the cable or else they WILL rip.

the touchpad cable will also rip if you open the top cover too much before disconnecting it and removing the tape (this happened to me).

 

I mean. You could just buy an external burner for like $30 if you want.

Newegg.com - external dvd burner usb

would be a pain when you suddenly really need to burn a cd or something and are on the go...though for college I found a 4 gig jump drive was more then enough for moving stuff around for classes, etc.

 

Im in the UK so im sure they'd just translate the price to £133, which would be quite disappointing. I had a look on the parts store earlier and it listed the drive but didn't give a price, so straight away I know it's going to be expensive! I might give them a ring tomorrow or something, but if it's more than £30 or so then I won't bother.

I just can't figure out how it's managed to develop this problem, granted I don't burn DVDs regularly, but I don't think it's been that long since I last did it. Maybe 4-6 months ago? I suppose I should just be grateful that discs can still be read

 

well it could be that the sata cable got loose or something/something happened there.

it could be something stupid like the drive just hates the discs you're using. though if you've used other media types for the same type of media (different cd brands, different dvd brands, etc) it may not be that.


you can try setting write type to incremental in imgburn but in the end it probably is a hardware problem and maybe the laser just gave out because it was faulty.

I had a faulty hdd on my envy 14 (launch unit) and at least one or two other people on this forum had GPUs that were binned too low..and can't really play games without underclocking the gpu. so...not like HP has done 100% perfect quality control.